Rainbow Bridge Picture

This was a decorative painting originally intended to be a gift for my niece. It is an oil painting done some time ago.size aprox: 10.5 x 13 3/4 It has a number of symbolic elements in it. The Rainbow bridge is a term often used as symbolic of the path to find god or spiritual awakening. The bridge is a transitional symbol of crossing one divide to another. The rainbow is a symbol for how all colors, and we too are all one… one light splitting into a variety of colors. This bridge is also traditionally associated within some belief systems to be the human spine, each Chakra along the human spine associated with a different color of the rainbow. The Sun and Moon are old symbols for the masculine and feminine aspects of god…the eclipse associated with the union of these two aspects. In the fairy / angel’s hand is the staff of Thoth Hermes or the caudacus. The staff again representative of the human spine (or tree of life) and the two snakes (an ancient symbol of wisdom), a male and female, encircling the staff form the sacred hermaphrodite, the one from which bore many. The snake is a dualistic symbol. Snakes venom in the ancient world was believed to be the cure for many ancient ailments when used in a small dose. In large doses, venom was lethal. Likewise, knowledge is dualistic. Knowledge can lead to things for the good of mankind, or its destruction.

The rabbit and the cat are interchangeable symbolically. Rabbits were once believed to be able to spontaneously reproduce on their own… and thus the Fibonacci number sequence which starts with one was created based on the believed mating pattern of rabbits. The Fibonacci number sequence can also be used to find the "Golden Mean" or Divine proportion. Rabbits became associated with the divine feminine. During the middle ages, the rabbit became associated with witch craft as it was closely associated with the feminine aspect of the divine… but as the rabbit had already become a symbol for Easter, somehow the association between witches and rabbits changed to witches and cats. The witch-hare became a black cat. This is strangely fitting as the rabbit, a trickster creature in fables worldwide, was often associated with being a shape-shifter.

There are two keys on the Fairies belt, one is silver and one is gold. It is said that knowledge of the path to enlightenment can either lead to wealth symbolized by the silver key, or the philosopher's stone... the gold key. The keeper of the keys in mythology was sometimes referred to as Hekate.